Dressed in a black velvet gown and gratuitous webs of diamonds, Immaculйe Constantin steps forwards. “My singular young lady is all grown-up … menopausal, cancerous, and fallen in with quite the wrong sort. So. Do I match my voice?”
Holly looks at this faceless girlhood figure, speechless.
Constantin’s smile fades, though it was never sincere. “Jacko could carry a dialogue. Only he wasn’t really Jacko by then, was he? Tell me, Holly, did you believe Marinus when she claimed your brother just happened to die of natural causes while Xi Lo was hovering nearby, mmm?”
Seconds pass. Holly’s voice is dry. “What are you saying?”
“Oh, my.” Constantin’s smile fades into pity. “You didbelieve them? Forget everything I said, I beg you. Gossip is the devil’s radio, and I shan’t be a broadcaster, but … try to put two and two together before you die. I’ll take care of Aoife, too. Just so, you know, she won’t miss you. In fact, why not go the whole hog and kill Sharon and Brendan and collect the full Sykes family set? As it were.”
Esther’s had about three minutes. The Sadaqat denouement should take five, if Pfenninger’s feeling voluble. I calculate our chances for when the psychoduel begins. The newest three Anchorites shouldn’t cause us too much trouble, but the Chapel is devoid of projectiles to kinetic and eleven against four is still eleven against four. We’ll need to buy Esther about seven minutes. Can we hold them off that long?
“You willregret threatening my family,” Holly’s saying. “I swear. I swear to God.”
“Oh, you swear, do you? To God, no less?” Immaculйe Constantin looks concerned. “But God’s dead. Why don’t we check if I’ll regret my promises with our friends the Radio People, shall we?” She cups her diamonded ear and pretends to listen. “No, Holly, no. You’re misinformed. I’ll regret nothing; you, however, are going to writhewith remorse that you deserted your secret friend Miss Constantin when you were sweet, seven, and psychic. Think about it. Only one Sykes would have died, instead of five Sykeses plus a Brubeck. You’ll positively screamwith regret! Well, Mr. Anyder? Was this brittle-boned widow a screamer in her pliable, pheromonal days?”
Hugo Lamb steps into view. Cleft-chinned, his body preserved at twenty-five years of age, and scornful-eyed. “She was the silent type. Hello, Holly. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”
Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. “What did they doto you?”
Some of the Anchorites laugh. Hugo looks back at his long-ago lover. “They”—he looks about the Chapel—“cured me. They cured me of a terrible wasting disease called mortality. There’s a lot of it about. The young hold out for a time, but eventually even the hardiest patient gets reduced to a desiccated embryo, a Strudlebug … a veined, scrawny, dribbling … bone clock, whose face betrays how very, very little time they have left.”
“ ‘Betrays’?” Pfenninger steps up. “A segue, Marinus. Did you know we have a supergrass among your Inner Circle?”
I resist the temptation to say, “Yes, we’ve known for a year now.”
“Not Mr. D’Arnoq,” Pfenninger continues. “He only duped you for seven days. Someone who’s been making a monstrous bloody tit of you for a whole year.”
I’ve been dreading this scene. “ Don’t, Pfenninger.”
“Yes, it hurts, but veritas vos liberabit—and remember, amusing me is your only means of squeezing out a few extra minutes …”
True. I think of incorporeal Esther, invoking a real psychoferno inside Фshima’s head. Every second matters. “Amaze and dismay me.”
Pfenninger clicks his fingers at the Umber Arch, and in strolls Sadaqat. His demeanor has changed from humble warden to captain of firing squad. “Hello again, dear friends. Here was my choice: twenty more years of housework, laundry, weeding, growing old, catheters, prostate trouble, oreternal life, free training in the Shaded Way, and the deeds to 119A. Mm. Let me think. For about twenty seconds. Well, well, well, the Way of the Butler just wasn’t for me.”
Holly is shocked: “They trusted you! They were your friends!”
“If you’d known Horology for longer than five days, Ms. Sykes,” Sadaqat walks up to the far end of the long table and leans on it as if he owns it, “you would e ventually wake up to the fact that Horology is a club for immortals, who prevent others from attaining their own privileges. They are aristocrats. They are verylike a white country—so sorry to bring race into this, but the analogy is spot on—a rich, white, imperial, exploitative bastion, which torpedoes the refugee boats coming from the Land of the Huddled Brown Masses. What I have done is to choose survival. Any living being would do the same.”
“Congratulations on the new job, Sadaqat.” Arkady’s sincerity is flawless. “ ‘Soul-harvester.’ Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
Sadaqat sneers: “Fancy your servile little Pakistani butler spotting your subtle Arkadian irony.”
Фshima asks, “What’s your hipster new name going to be, Sadaqat? Major Integrity? Mr. Snitchfink? Judas McJanus?”
“Here’s what my name is not—Mr. Don’t-Worry-About-Sadaqat-He’s-Happy-to-Have-the-Privilege-of-Blowing-Himself-Up-on-the-Stairs-to-Save-Our-Pious-Atemporal-Asses.”
“Sadaqat’s played his part,” I tell Pfenninger. “Let him go.”
Pfenninger flicks his bow tie. “Don’t pretend to know my mind, Marinus. You’d not knowingly nurture a spy.”
“Fine, I had no idea. He followed your orders. Spied on us. Threw away his ten kilos of Blu Tack. Let him go.”
Sadaqat snarls in a way he hasn’t done since I first treated him at Dawkins Hospital in Berkshire, England: “It wasn’t Blu Tack! It was N9D. Hyperexplosives, which youas good as strapped to my chest!”
“Actually, Marinus, he’s half right,” Arkady tells me. “The Blu Tack people make it, but technically its brand-name is White Tack.”
Sadaqat stands on the bench. “Liar! You dragged me along as your human land mine!”
“Three times I tried to persuade you not to join the Second Mission, Sadaqat,” I remind him.
“You could’ve suasioned me, if you cared so much. And Mr. Pfenninger isn’t going to ‘let me go’! I’m the Twelfth Anchorite.”
“Forgive me for raising the specter of race,” Arkady says, “but look at Anchorites One through Eleven. Any ethnic commonalities jump out at you?”
Sadaqat is immune to doubt. “I’ve been recruited to improve the—the—the balance of the Anchorites.”
Arkady’s snorting laugh turns into a cough. “Sorry, a bit of saliva went down the wrong way. And whydid the All Whites choose you?”
“My psychovoltage is off the scale, is why!”
“You poor sap.” Фshima yawns. “I’ve eaten trays of dim sum with more psychosoteric potential than you.”
“I’m curious, Marinus,” says Immaculйe Constantin. “Your pet schizophrenic just sold you down the river. Will nothing make you despise a person?”
“Homicide and animacide work just fine. But I blame you for bending Sadaqat’s fear of dying into treachery. I’m sorry, Sadaqat. It’s the War. I had to let them believe you were their ace in the hole. Thank you for the garden, at least. This won’t change that.”
“I amthe Twelfth Anchorite. Tell them, Miss Constantin, what you told me. About my potential as a follower of the Shaded Way.”
“You have the potential to whinge people to death, Sadaqat.” When Constantin’s tone turns maternal I know time’s running out. “No. Psychosoterically speaking, you fire blanks. Worse, you’re a traitor. A talentless, chakraless, browntraitor.”
Sadaqat looks round at the tall white Anchorites disbelievingly. I can barely look at his changed expression, but I owe him this. Then, mercifully, he turns his back to us to take a few shaky steps towards the Umber Arch. Two of the rearguard block his way. Sadaqat flees for the exit but Pfenninger psycholassos him, reeling him in with mighty pulls, then kinetics him twenty feet high. I can’t intervene. The Second Mission depends on us preserving every volt for the coming duel. Constantin hand-symbols an Act of Violence, and Sadaqat’s head is twisted through 360 degrees. “There,” purrs Constantin. “We’re not such sadists, are we? Nice and quick. Chickens suffer more when you wring their necks, don’t they, Holly?”